Tuesday Top Ten

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the Broke and the Bookish. Book bloggers create their own lists based on the chosen topics and post links to our lists. It’s a way of all sharing our thoughts and our love of books.  And who doesn’t love lists??

So this week’s challenge was to list the top ten books you would like based on a favorite movie/TV show.  Here’s the problem – I don’t really watch much TV, we don’t have cable, and if we watch something it’s usually something that the kids want to see.  And we don’t go to the movies much either, unless it’s a movie based on a book, so I completely cheated and decided to list the top 10 books to read if you loved Divergent (at least it’s a movie, even if it was a book first!).  And I stuck only with books/series that I have personally read – I know there are many more out there!

1. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
2. 1984 by George Orwell
3. The Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness
4. The Giver by Lois Lowry
5. The Matched trilogy by Ally Condie
6. The Delirium trilogy by Lauren Oliver
7. The Lorien Legacies by Pittacus Lore
8. The Caster Chronicles by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
9. The Host  by Stephanie Meyers
10. The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins

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Tuesday Top Ten

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the Broke and the Bookish. Book bloggers create their own lists based on the chosen topics and post links to our lists. It’s a way of all sharing our thoughts and our love of books.  And who doesn’t love lists??

So this week’s challenge was to list the top ten worlds from books that we wouldn’t want to live in.  The first part of the list was easy, I’ve haven’t met many dystopian societies that have much to recommend them…  After that it got a little tricky since I don’t read a lot of books that take place in different worlds so I included some that take place in times/places that I wouldn’t want to live in.

1. Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins – There’s nothing good about a world that pits teenagers in a televised contest to the death.
2. Delirium series by Lauren Oliver – Love as a disease?  Not cool…
3. Divergent series by Veronica Roth – Being forced to choose a faction, serums that affect your brain, fighting, death – doesn’t sound like all that much fun to me.
4. The Giver by Lois Lowry – While things do improve some, eventually, in later books, who wants to live in a world without color, beauty, memory, emotion?
5. Burial Rites by Hannah Kent – Iceland in the early nineteenth century is brutal enough before you consider the whole beheading thing…
6. Lorien Legacies series by Pittacus Lore – Disgusting aliens shooting up everything and trying to take over the planet so they can ultimately destroy it – need I say more?
7. Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien – Lots of fighting and really repulsive creature hanging around in creepy places.
8. I Am A Man by Joe Starita – Being a Native American in this country in the nineteenth century is not something I would recommend.
9. Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra – Taking place throughout the wars in Chechnya, the brutality and poverty and fear are heartbreaking.
10. A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park – The story of one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, this heartbreaking tale brings forward this horrific war and its effect on the innocent and the children in the country.

Tuesday Top Ten

 Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the Broke and the Bookish. Book bloggers create their own lists based on the chosen topics and post links to our lists. It’s a way of all sharing our thoughts and our love of books.  And who doesn’t love lists??

So this week’s challenge was to list the top ten best and/or worst book series endings.  This was tough for me, because although it seems like I read a lot of series, I generally don’t have that strong of an opinion on how they end…  But I did what I could…  What series endings did you love/hate?

First, the best:

1. Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling – OK, probably everybody picked this one, but I don’t care.  The only thing disappointing about this ending was that it was the end.
2. Delirium by Lauren Oliver – I know some people were disappointed in the ending of this series, but I liked its relative realism – everything doesn’t always get wrapped up tidily!
3. Pendragon by D.J. MacHale – If you’ve never heard of this series, it’s worth checking out if you are a fan of young adult or fantasy fiction.  I enjoyed it all the way through, even to the ending.
4. Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer – In my opinion, the series got a little weak in the middle, but all the things that made me love Artemis were back for the final book!
5. The Giver by Lois Lowry – Finally!  All of our questions are answered!  I though the final book did a great job of bringing all of the other disparate stories back together and telling the story from a different point of view.
6. Chaos Walking by Patrick Ness – An engrossing series, amazing from beginning to end!

Now, the worst:

1. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer –OK, the whole series was ridiculous, but at least it was entertaining.  Unfortunately, there’s a point where it just got too ridiculous…
2. Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins – I LOVED Hunger Games – Catching Fire got there eventually – but I found Mockingjay disappointing…
3. Fallen by Lauren Kate – I liked the series when it started, but by the end I was just annoyed…
4. Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare – I enjoyed the book, it was a fun read, but really?  Could her decisions have been any easier?  Could it all have come out any more perfectly?

Requiem

This is the conclusion to one of those trilogies that I’m always complaining about.  I LOVED the first book, Delirum, which I read shortly before the second book came out.  I couldn’t wait to read Pandemonium when it came out, and I have to admit to being a little disappointed with it.  It suffered from the “middle-book syndrome” and I was disappointed in having to wait another year for it to get better and to come to a conclusion.  I have read numerous reviews complaining about the ending of the trilogy, whether it was because someone had a preference in the love triangle that didn’t come to fruition or because there were too many issues left unresolved.  I did feel like the ending was a bit rushed, but overall I liked the ending, I though the unresolved issues were appropriate, displaying that life isn’t simple and events don’t always lead to a tidy ending, we don’t always have control, we certainly don’t control others, the future is unknown, but we keep on going.  And I guess it leaves room for another book???

“They couldn’t have known that even this was a lie – that we never really choose, not entirely.  We are always being pushed and squeezed down one road or another.  We have no choice but to step forward, and the step forward again, and then step forward again; suddenly we find ourselves on a road we haven’t chosen at all.  But maybe happiness isn’t in the choosing.  Maybe it’s in the fiction, in the pretending” that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.”

Title: Requiem
Author: Lauren Oliver
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
Pages: 432
Publication: Harper Collins, March 2013